This site was originally intended solely as a temporary holding place until a web page was developed; however, I'm now being realistic with myself and owning up to the fact that I have neither the time nor the drive to learn the caliber of code-writing necessary to create a site anywhere close to that one which I initially had in mind. Therefore, this is staying like it is indefinitely.
This core of this site is PDFs that I have created of interviews with black metal bands from the genre's 'classic' period - 1984-1995, as well as corresponding photographs from the era. Some interviews may fall outside of this range, but most will not.
The PDFs themselves are being created from interviews that I have collected over the last fifteen years from hard copies of 'zines or scans thereof, or in a few cases from interviews that were at one time posted as simple text on fan sites, the vast majority of which are now sadly defunct. Most of the photographs that I'll be posting have been collected similarly; some may still be found online - some easily, others only through patient excavation - and others may no longer. Fortunately, however, I have saved nearly everything that I have encountered in regard to black metal's glory days, and after having watched site after site - glorious despite their crudeness and minimalism, hosted by the likes of Angelfire, GeoCities, Xoom, Lycos, Tripod, etc., etc. - bite the dust, I've at last decided to make my own to pay homage to the music that is and that has been my greatest passion for more than half of my life. Besides, I hate to see these artifacts disappear, and I fear that those that haven't yet will only continue to do so.
So, then, this is essentially an archive, and I want to make it especially clear that, unless I say otherwise, none of the interviews here were conducted by me, nor were any of the photographs taken by me: I'm just a fan who wants to make these things available for like-minded people.
The PDFs have been stylized as closely as possible to the original source; I have also taken great pains to maintain the integrity of the original source, such that elements like font styles and any grammatical or orthographical errors have been preserved as closely as possible. Additionally, sources are cited where available.
While I could scan the interviews from the original 'zines (where available) and post those scans here, I probably won't for a few reasons:
1. I've always wanted this project to have a unified look to the extent that one could flip through the interviews as though turning the pages of a compilation book. In fact, I would love to see this become a reality, but I feel it's almost certainly impossible to achieve in a physical, published format because of the potentially nightmarish task of tracking down editors of 'zines published twenty years ago all over the world in order for them to grant permissions of use. Still: throw me a bone and pretend.
2. This is as much nostalgic for me as it is an archive of materials: having been born in 1985, the very year that Bathory's The Return... was released, I initially dove into extreme metal and, more pertinently, black metal with the help of the good ol' internet in 1997 after having initially discovered "the Underground" in a feature on it in an old Guitar World. I touched on this above, but to expand more fully: I miss looking at homemade websites that kinda look like shit but that were obviously created out of love of and enthusiasm for this music. That's what I have ultimately envisioned for Blackened Relics. Think of it, then, as an archive modeled after fansites like they used to make 'em; fansites are, after all, the fanzines of music sites. Let me explain further.
When I discovered black metal, there was no Wikipedia, there was no Encyclopedia Metallum (bless 'em), there was no Lords of Chaos, there was no Google as we know it today. Hell, there wasn't even Napster yet: there was just Alta Vista leading us to ineptly designed fansites and Audiogalaxy. Oh, there was also ANUS, but that was ever only so helpful when you're 12 and trying to read a review that wants you to know that "Intricate subchambers of reaction provide space for iteration of higher level events." Yeah.
I miss those days. I remember poring over search results for hours hoping for something useful, or at least something new, about this extraordinary new world of music I'd just stumbled upon from some out of the way fan site with five thousand visitors ever; I remember hearing A Blaze in the Northern Sky or De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas or The Celtic Winter for the very first time via mp3s with horrible bit rates that only featured the middle two minutes of a song; and I remember waiting for what seemed like years for those very records to come in the mail after having finally found them in some bedroom distro on the other side of the world, because none of them had been reissued yet and CD Now sure didn't carry 'em, never mind a physically-located music/media store.
And you know what? It was awesome. It may seem silly to some of you who don't know what I'm talking about, and it may even seem silly to some of you who do, but for me the manner in which I dove into metal was awesome and ultimately life-altering. I can only imagine how much more awesome discovering this music must have been for a tape-trader five, six, seven years prior, but I digress.
I have been working on this project for years, archiving material, source-checking, and creating stylized word documents and PDFs, and am still nowhere near completion. I may never be. I don't think I want to be. Enjoy.
Regards,
AEon
This core of this site is PDFs that I have created of interviews with black metal bands from the genre's 'classic' period - 1984-1995, as well as corresponding photographs from the era. Some interviews may fall outside of this range, but most will not.
The PDFs themselves are being created from interviews that I have collected over the last fifteen years from hard copies of 'zines or scans thereof, or in a few cases from interviews that were at one time posted as simple text on fan sites, the vast majority of which are now sadly defunct. Most of the photographs that I'll be posting have been collected similarly; some may still be found online - some easily, others only through patient excavation - and others may no longer. Fortunately, however, I have saved nearly everything that I have encountered in regard to black metal's glory days, and after having watched site after site - glorious despite their crudeness and minimalism, hosted by the likes of Angelfire, GeoCities, Xoom, Lycos, Tripod, etc., etc. - bite the dust, I've at last decided to make my own to pay homage to the music that is and that has been my greatest passion for more than half of my life. Besides, I hate to see these artifacts disappear, and I fear that those that haven't yet will only continue to do so.
So, then, this is essentially an archive, and I want to make it especially clear that, unless I say otherwise, none of the interviews here were conducted by me, nor were any of the photographs taken by me: I'm just a fan who wants to make these things available for like-minded people.
The PDFs have been stylized as closely as possible to the original source; I have also taken great pains to maintain the integrity of the original source, such that elements like font styles and any grammatical or orthographical errors have been preserved as closely as possible. Additionally, sources are cited where available.
While I could scan the interviews from the original 'zines (where available) and post those scans here, I probably won't for a few reasons:
1. I've always wanted this project to have a unified look to the extent that one could flip through the interviews as though turning the pages of a compilation book. In fact, I would love to see this become a reality, but I feel it's almost certainly impossible to achieve in a physical, published format because of the potentially nightmarish task of tracking down editors of 'zines published twenty years ago all over the world in order for them to grant permissions of use. Still: throw me a bone and pretend.
2. This is as much nostalgic for me as it is an archive of materials: having been born in 1985, the very year that Bathory's The Return... was released, I initially dove into extreme metal and, more pertinently, black metal with the help of the good ol' internet in 1997 after having initially discovered "the Underground" in a feature on it in an old Guitar World. I touched on this above, but to expand more fully: I miss looking at homemade websites that kinda look like shit but that were obviously created out of love of and enthusiasm for this music. That's what I have ultimately envisioned for Blackened Relics. Think of it, then, as an archive modeled after fansites like they used to make 'em; fansites are, after all, the fanzines of music sites. Let me explain further.
When I discovered black metal, there was no Wikipedia, there was no Encyclopedia Metallum (bless 'em), there was no Lords of Chaos, there was no Google as we know it today. Hell, there wasn't even Napster yet: there was just Alta Vista leading us to ineptly designed fansites and Audiogalaxy. Oh, there was also ANUS, but that was ever only so helpful when you're 12 and trying to read a review that wants you to know that "Intricate subchambers of reaction provide space for iteration of higher level events." Yeah.
I miss those days. I remember poring over search results for hours hoping for something useful, or at least something new, about this extraordinary new world of music I'd just stumbled upon from some out of the way fan site with five thousand visitors ever; I remember hearing A Blaze in the Northern Sky or De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas or The Celtic Winter for the very first time via mp3s with horrible bit rates that only featured the middle two minutes of a song; and I remember waiting for what seemed like years for those very records to come in the mail after having finally found them in some bedroom distro on the other side of the world, because none of them had been reissued yet and CD Now sure didn't carry 'em, never mind a physically-located music/media store.
And you know what? It was awesome. It may seem silly to some of you who don't know what I'm talking about, and it may even seem silly to some of you who do, but for me the manner in which I dove into metal was awesome and ultimately life-altering. I can only imagine how much more awesome discovering this music must have been for a tape-trader five, six, seven years prior, but I digress.
I have been working on this project for years, archiving material, source-checking, and creating stylized word documents and PDFs, and am still nowhere near completion. I may never be. I don't think I want to be. Enjoy.
Regards,
AEon
I'm happy as hell I found your site. Thank you friend
ReplyDeleteThank *you*. It's largely inactive, sadly, but I still lurk around here and there and eventually I'll put up more features/files.
ReplyDelete